Gold Rush: Freddy Dodge's Mine Rescue

How's it going, Terry?

Terrible!

I've sunk in about $120,000.

To me, it's everything.

Well, we know he's losing gold, there.

What the heck here?

He's gonna need another hand out here.

The biggest thing we need to work on is his wife.

Since I've gotten so big in the last few years,

she's a little intimidated here.

Heads, you talk to her.

What's your biggest fear here, honestly?

We don't have time to screw up.

Now the generator stopped!

Did it just shut down?

I know you wouldn't want to go

off the side of this mountain here.

It's a long, long way's down

to that river, Juan.

Yeah, for sure.

That's a hell of a drop, there, Freddy.

And I can't swim, so...

Freddy and Juan are in British Columbia

traversing the remote northern Rockies

10 miles north of the U.S. border.

en route to a solo miner,

in what may be

his final season,

without a lifeline.

He's doing everything from digging the pay,

to running the plant,

to taking care of the tailings,

to putting everything up.

That's a ton of work for just one person.

He must love gold and gold mining.

That's for dang sure.

In the 1880s,

prospectors first mined along the Salmo River,

as they hiked east along the Dewdney Trail,

from Vancouver to Wild Horse Creek.

Between 1899 and 1979,

almost 800,000 ounces of gold were mined in the area,

worth $1.4 billion today.

Well, this looks like it's it, huh, Juan?

Hey guys, how are you?

- Good. - You must be Terry. Juan.

- Nice to meet you, Juan. - Nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you, Terry. - Freddy!

Nice to meet you, too, guys. Holy smokes!

You guys made it in.

- Yeah. - Yeah, we made it.

It's not the worst road we've been on,

but it's definitely not

the best road we've been on.

It really lets you know that you're in the backwoods here.

Gold mining is something that I've always had a passion for.

On the weekends, I would go down,

and sit with a couple of old-timers,

and we were pulling out some nice size gold nuggets.

My eyes kind of went to saucers.

I want to know where

the big guy hid his jewelry box,

and I want to dig it up.

Terry bought this 247-acre placer mine

from his uncle,

and began to follow his dream.

My wife and I started out

working with a small trommel, hand mining,

you know, about a yard to two and a half a day.

Oh, it was really exciting.

We'd shovel two, three hours at a time,

go have a beer, come back, do some more,

and actually, we found some really nice gold.

But Terry wanted to go bigger.

In 2020, he cashed in his retirement fund

and his family's life savings to upsize his trommel

to a 15-ton wash plant.

I don't know the exact number,

'cause Terry never told me,

but there's a lot.

Like, a lot. We have no savings.

Everything we have is on the line.

I've sunk in about $120,000.

Into this.

Maybe to some people,

120 grand is not a lot of money, but to me,

it's everything.

The huge investment

has become a strain on their relationship.

It's very stressful.

Yeah.

Sleepless nights.

Mmm-hmm.

- Lots of those. - Yes.

Our fair share of arguments as a couple, you know?

All his savings sunk into the equipment,

Terry hasn't been able to hire any help.

He needs help down there,

but, because of the big equipment,

it's scary.

Like, you never know what can happen, right?

Anything can go wrong.

I really don't feel I have a place down there,

because I really don't know what to do.

My dream here is to say I'm an actual miner,

and if I could make this into my livelihood

as I'm getting older,

then I'm a super happy guy,

because that means I'm being successful.

- You're doing all this all by yourself, huh? - Yes, I am.

- So, you're feeding the plant? - Yes.

- Tailings? - I do that, too.

- Digging the pay? - Yes.

- Wow. - Doing the cleanup?

- Yes. Everything. - Everything all by yourself?

All by myself. Yes.

- It's a lot of work for one guy. - It is.

- Yes. - A ton of work.

Last year was actually my really first year

setting all this up,

trying to get everything all up and running,

and of course, it took me all summer

to go through, I would say,

about 40, 50 yards of material.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, not much at all, you know, especially...

So that's all you've ran?

That's all I've ran through this plant.

Are you about out of savings?

Pretty much.

I'm losing a lot of money doing what I'm doing.

We don't have nothing in the account.

It's all invested into here.

You got any of your gold?

Actually, yes, I do.

That's really good-looking gold, though.

That's beautiful gold.

What kind of gold are you needing per day

to make a living in here?

Well, I would like to at least pull out

an ounce every second day, you know?

So, last summer how much gold did you get?

About 20 grams last year.

- Twenty grams last year. - Yes.

- Oh, wow. - Yeah.

- Not much at all. - No.

Twenty grams of gold

is worth roughly $1,200.

What's your goal for this year?

I need to make at least 40 ounces a season

to get out of the red, to get into the black.

Okay.

- You know? - It's a big jump, yeah.

It is a huge step.

Terry needs more than 50 times that amount,

around $70,000 in gold, to make up his losses.

Well, let's fire the plant up, and run four hours...

- Let's do it. - ...see what we see.

All right. That sounds good with me, guys.

Okay, Freddy! Firing it up!

All right!

Let's clock it, Juan-o.

Set the time.

Four hours.

The first step in his process,

Terry sifts out large boulders with a rock grizzly.

He then feeds the pay

into his five-yard hopper feeder.

A 35-foot conveyor belt carries this material

to a prewash and shaker deck,

where it is grated

before it passes down into the sluices.

Pretty wet material, eh, Juan-o?

- Yeah, very wet material. - Pretty damp.

- He almost needs a vibrator on that. - Yeah.

Yeah. He does, if it's not gonna fall through.

Stuff's just plugging up on that grizzly.

Time to go have a look here, see what's going on.

This material's been sitting since last year.

So it's pretty wet, huh?

It's still wet. Like, it's already two years old.

I'm very frustrated right now.

I thought for sure that the material

would be a little bit better.

But even though I inlined my hopper feeder,

it's still sticking to the inside walls.

So it's actually not sliding down where it's supposed to.

Let's see what the heck here.

Now I gotta bang the side, you know,

just to keep the material moving.

Whew, okay.

Once through the hopper,

and into the shaker deck,

the paydirt splits into three different sluice runs,

coarse, medium, and fine.

A fourth run, for extra fines,

passes through a centrifugal bowl

that separates the gold by rotating at high speed.

What do you think, Juan?

I don't know, Fred.